Examples of prior flexible cable connectors shown in Japanese Patent Disclosure Bulletins Nos. 3-266384 and 4-34880, published on Nov. 27, 1991 and Feb. 5, 1992. As indicated diagrammatically in FIG. 11, the prior connectors comprise an insulating housing 91 each formed with a cable receiving cavity which opens at a cable admitting mouth to a front face and a series of contacts which are anchored in a row in the cavity and a slider 92 for reciprocal sliding movement in the housing towards and away from the cable receiving mouth between cable admitting and cable connecting positions.
In this type of connector 90, in the cable admitting position, the end of the flexible cable is inserted into the cable receiving cavity with the majority of the slider withdrawn from the cavity in front of the mouth; the slider is then pushed into the cable receiving cavity, pressing the flexible cable onto a protuberance on the contact, thereby connecting the respective conductive paths or layers thereof to respective contacts.
However, a disadvantage of the prior teachings is that although the majority of the slider is withdrawn in front of the mouth in the cable admitting position, an inner end of the slider remains in the mouth restricting the clearance so that it is not easy to insert the flexible cable.
Additionally, in the cable admitting position, as shown in FIG. 11, the outer end 92a of the slider 92 protrudes outwardly from the face of the insulating housing for handling by the fingers, causing a corresponding undesirable increase in the external dimensions of the connector, which is also particularly disadvantageous where, as shown in FIG. 11 (B), connectors of this type are commonly packaged for automatic feed on carrier strips formed by upper and lower webs 95 and 96, respectively, where the increase in size results in an undesirable increase in the required pitch.
Furthermore, in an attempt to minimize the package dimensions, the connectors are packaged with the inner end of the slider fully inserted into the cable receiving cavity. An additional handling step of withdrawing the slider to the cable admitting position is therefore required when the package is opened while the action of manually pulling out the slider introduces a risk of damage to the slider locking mechanism if pulled too strongly.